003. Trail Mix vs. Tarmac Tricks

On the surface, trail runners and road runners all seem alike – one single species. Both hold strong opinions about their favourite running shoes, are obsessed with consuming inordinate amounts of food and are in a perpetual state of training for the next goal race. They are also not opposed to sharing more than is necessary about their bodily functions.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you start to find many differences. The trail runner loves to walk. The road runner sees “walking in running shoes” as an abject form of failure. The trail runner will eat anything you put in front of them during a race, while road runners are meticulously refining their carb intake with gels, shakes and powders with scientific precision to prevent “the bonk” – the moment when glycogen stores are depleted and their dream run turns into a nightmarish death march. The trail runner measures their next goal in terms of extreme views, elevation gains and descents, temperatures survived and the number of trekking poles snapped. The road runner has one lord and saviour: the stopwatch. Always faster, never fully satisfied.

One of the biggest diversions in the personalities of trail and road runners, is their attitude towards crowds. The trail runner is a lone wolf. Content to stroll in inhospitable environments with nary a human or any meaningful life force for company, the trail runner seeks the void inside their own mind. The road runner is a co-dependent being. Always looking for someone to chase, or be chased by. The road runner also loves a crowd and shared trauma. When the streets are lined by thousands of people to survey their misery, the road runner comes alive.

It is due to this that road runners have formed a culture around pace setters, or “bus drivers” as they are colloquially known in South Africa. These brave souls are people who dedicate their efforts to completing a race in a specific time. They are often identified by flags that indicate their goal time and the bus driver’s name. Faster runners (below 3:30 on a marathon), rarely have a use for them, but slower runners live and die by their bus drivers. The camaraderie, smart pacing and positive energy around these groups have guided many a believing runner – for whom the bus goal pace is a stretch – to their specific nirvana. They are also magnets for spectators next to the road and the vibe that follows a “bus” is positively electric.

I recently observed an interesting discussion on a Comrades 2025 Facebook page about bus drivers. The original poster (OP) described how a bus in a recent marathon had missed its target pace by a considerable margin. This was significant, as the passengers on the bus were trying to run a specific pace to secure an improved seeding for Comrades.

(TL;DR – at Comrades, the race starts once the gun goes off, which means that you lose more time the further back you start. The faster you run a qualifying marathon, the further forward you are allowed to start the race and the less time you lose at the start.)

The OP then asked the question whether the bus driver should be held accountable for the missed target - as if the poor bus driver were a war criminal who had to be held to retrospective retribution for a heinous deed. Luckily, sanity prevailed and many commenters retorted that the bus driver is also human and fallible to the trials and tribulations of the marathon. An alternative to driving the faltering bus should perhaps have been to throw away the bus flag and cut the runners free when it became clear that the target would not be reached. In the end, the bus is like a slightly rigged lottery ticket – you have a good chance of coming up with the winning numbers, but in the probabilistic world of marathon running, the odds might not be in your favour on the day.

Contrast this with the trail runner. At many grueling trail events, you will find an official. This official is often shorn in a hipster cap, wears a funky moustache and is armed with a megaphone. Through this megaphone they will announce – and ask that all the runners repeat after them with maximum enthusiasm:

While trail runners and road runners share many surface-level traits and they might seem the same species, it is perhaps more accurate to describe the trail and road runner as different species of the same genus – runnerus glycogenus absurdus.

As someone who identifies as both species, I strive to use my trail and road runner characteristics to become a more complete runner. When I am deep in my pain cave during a road race, I shun my solo trail runner tendencies to embrace the thrill of the crowd and use their energy to power me through bad patches. Against this embrace of extraversion, my inner trail runner teaches my road runner-self to be a bit more introspective about the goals that I set for myself. I am no stranger to the disappointment of striving to reach a running goal and failing miserably. I often find myself saying after a miss:

Common generic road runner complaints are:

• Going out too fast

• Going out too slow

• Eating too much and feeling bloated

• Eating too little and "bonking"

• Dehydrating

• Overhydrating

• Wearing the wrong type of shoe, but with the right laces

• Wearing the right type of shoe, but with the wrong laces

• The weather being too cold

• The weather being too warm

• The route being too hilly

• The route being too flat

• Being in a build phase

• Being in a taper phase

• Having to take an unscheduled bathroom break

• Having to take multiple unscheduled bathroom breaks

• Leaving toe nails too long

• Cutting toe nails too short

• The bus driver was too slow

• The bus driver was too fast

• And the list goes on...

Therefore, whenever you run in a bus or fly solo and end up flying too close to the sun like Icarus, rather than whipping out the generic road runner complaint checklist, try to remember that – in the spirit of the trail runner – if you do not reach your goal (or get injured, lost or die), it is your own damn fault.